Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I give huge thanks to the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) for securing this very important debate. The question is: do we need a Minister for men and boys? I would say that ideally we do not, but we already have a Minister for women—in fact, we have the Women and Equalities Committee. We have to ask ourselves why we need these things especially for women. Is perhaps because, as a society, we feel that women are discriminated against? I think they probably are—we all know that and all agree with that. That is one of the reasons I sat on the Women and Equalities Committee in the last Parliament. But what about men? What about men and boys? What about young boys? What about white working-class young boys?
Boys and young men have historically been very useful to our society, especially when we needed coal mined, steel made in mills in the north, or factories filled with labourers to do back-breaking hard work. Young men and boys were also very useful when it came to fighting wars. They were dragged away from their towns and villages to be killed on a foreign battlefield. Even now, we send young lads to foreign fields, and they come back—at least some of them do—missing legs or arms. Even worse, some come back in a coffin, and we all say, “What a great young man he was. What a lot of great friends he had. He was a comrade. He was brave,” and so on, and in a few days we forget about him, and we leave the family to pick up the pieces and live a lifetime of grief. But these days, a lot of young men have no idea what they will do with their lives when they leave school. The pits and the coalmines have gone. Industry has declined. Net zero is killing once thriving industries in the north and the midlands—industries that took young men straight from school into the workplace, where they would spend 30 or 40 years.
Meanwhile the lawmakers in this place—some idiotic lawmakers sometimes—do not have a clue about what young men and boys are going through. Instead, they talk about white privilege, and they tell boys that they need to go on courses to not be misogynistic. That is absolutely shameful. We take all the opportunities away from young men and boys and then tell them that they are to blame for the way women are tret in this country. That is nonsense. The Centre for Social Justice tells us that boys and men are increasingly falling behind in education, employment and social wellbeing—a phenomenon often called a hidden crisis. Well, it is not a hidden crisis; it is out there in plain sight. Girls consistently outperform boys at school. We have rising loneliness, a lack of opportunities and a lack of positive role models for young men, especially in working-class communities.
Who is to blame for all this? I think this place is to blame—I truly do. We have produced a benefits system that does not encourage the family unit any more. Sometimes it is more profitable to be a single parent at home—it is mainly women, if we are honest. A lot of these women are left to bring up boys on their own, with no male role model in the house. These young boys then go to infant school and primary school, where we hardly ever see a male teacher any more. In some of the schools I visit, there is not a single male teacher. The first proper role model that some of these young lads see is when they get to senior school. It is absolutely shocking. Is it any wonder that our young men are confused and do not have any direction? In fact, some of the only interactions these young men have are with the local bobby, when they have been in trouble on the street.
It was different for me in my day. I grew up listening to my dad’s alarm clock going off every morning at 5 o’clock. He would get up and go and do a shift down the pit. Then, a few years later, he would get me up, and I would go down the pit with my dad. He was my role model. Every single lad in our village had a role model, because of the family unit. My dad was my role model, and for many other kids in the village, their dads were theirs.
I strongly believe that this place has broken our society, and it never takes any responsibility. We have MPs in this place, including the Prime Minister—I want to have a go now—telling young boys that they must watch BBC programmes like “Adolescence” because of the way women are treated. We are blaming young boys for the way women are treated. I would say, yes, let them watch this programme, but make girls watch it as well. As a society, we should all be watching these things. We need a Minister for young men and boys to put right the wrongs created in this place.